Wednesday 8 July 2009

Indians against Early Seleucids

Last night I ended up fighting with Simon's Indians against Billy and William, who were using my Early Seleucids. Simon chose the army and the deployment, which was a big change from the previous game two weeks ago: a long but rather fragile centre of small infantry units interspersed with elephants, and two powerful wing columns. The Seleucids had the usual strong central phalanx and a mix of elephants, light troops and cavalry on either side of the infantry. We both had various skirmishers out front, and in the event they just cancelled out. The relative deployments produced a situation in which the deeper phalanx easily crushed our centre, while our wings were victorious. The crisis came at the point of the two joins between our centre and flanks, where the end infantry units had been set up. On our right, Simon lost both of his units, while mine were successful in pushing forward in concert with the attack colum. We won (just) because I was able to feed one of my cavalry units into the centre, catching a phalanx in the flank before our centre collapsed completely. This match-up always seems to be very close...

Key to units, pretty much from left to right:
Ch1: 2 Chariots
Ch2: 2 Chariots
E1: 3 Elephants
C1: 18 Militia Cavalry in two ranks
C2: 18 Militia Cavalry in two ranks
I1: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
I2: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
E2: 2 Elephants
I3: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
I4: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
E3: 2 Elephants
I5: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
I6: 24 Massed Archers in two ranks
E4: 2 Elephants
Ch3: 3 Chariots
C3: 18 Militia Cavalry in three ranks

Unit C2 was the one that won us the game, wheeling in to the right behind our battered but victorious infantry (I1 and I2) as E2 barely held on against a phalanx to its front.

2 comments:

  1. LOVE the Indian army. As soon as Tactica 2 comes out, I'll be all over it, though I've decided that I'll probably build my armies in 15mm instead of 25mm.

    Tactica looks positively epic in 25mm, but I have limited space, so....

    Keep up the good work.

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  2. Hi Joe, thanks for the comment. 25mm Indians will be expensive...Simon has been adding to his for a long time now, and has only just got them to the stage of being useable under Tactica II. I'm hoping he'll post some photos on our club website at one point (the link to the Phoenix is at the foot of this blog); failing that, I'll maybe get him to email me some photos so that I can post them here.

    Cheers
    Paul

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